Rethinking Church: Our Basic Values                                                                November 6, 2005

Outreach: The Power of the Gospel                                                               Romans 1:1-17 (NIV)

OUTREACH AND THE GOSPEL

Today we continue in our series called “Rethinking Church: Our Basic Values.”  Following our FLOWS acrostic, today we come to the ‘O’ – which stands for outreach.  Outreach has several differing nuances; all of them have validity.  Whenever we do something kind for another (like the Operation Christmas Child boxes) which we do as expression of God’s love, this is an outreach.  When we do things in church which are geared to draw the non-churched into the community of faith, this is a witness.  But I’m going to focus on the evangelical side of witness; the church’s task of proclaiming salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  We dare not neglect this calling. 

Let’s be frank: there is a sense in which we’re slightly embarrassed by this.  We know immediately that when we say that salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ, we are implying that those who do not have faith in Jesus Christ do not have salvation and hell-bound.  Ouch.  That is where we stop.  This brutal fact simply drains us of any zeal because we know we live in a pluralistic society that depends upon mutual understanding and tolerance.  Yet this gospel seems to us deeply intolerant.  Let’s take that feeling and put it aside for a moment.  We’ll come to it later.

THERE’S POWER IN THEM WORDS

Romans perhaps the most important book for the Church’s doctrine.  It is had a tremendous influence on Christian thought and experience.  It was the reading of Romans that brought inspiration to Martin Luther and sparked the great Reformation.  It was felt that the message of justification by faith had been lost, and was reclaimed.  John Wesley had his Aldersgate experience when his heart was ‘strangely warmed.”  He had just returned from his failures in Georgia and was a depressed failure. He went to service at a church at Aldersgate St. in London.  The minister was reading the preface to Luther’s commentary on Romans.  As Wesley listened, he says his heart was ‘strangely warmed.’  Somehow, the gospel finally sank into his heart, and we gained assurance of his salvation that transformed him forever.  Today there are 80 million Methodists worldwide whose lives have been impacted.

I think there is power in these words and in this message.  But it is the kind of power that we easily loose track of.  We Christians have a tendency to wander back into a level of spiritual mediocrity that dampens the deeper life of the Spirit.  We wander away from the simplicity of the gospel.  Today I want us to wander back.  There’s power in these words.  These words proclaim to us the gospel of God whereby we are eternally set free, washed pure, cleansed and made whole.  There’s power in these words.  These words changed my life forever.  In all our desire to be tolerant, do not turn your back on this fact: there is power in these words.  We need that power as a church to be what God calls us to be.  Now, let’s look at the words – and receive them to be what they are: the word of God for the people of God.

THE GOSPEL PAUL PREACHED

I want to focus our attention on verses 1-6 and verses 15-17.  We’re going to focus on how Paul understands the “gospel” – its meaning and content.  But before I even read them again, I want to talk about Paul generally.  I have found great insight in understanding Paul’s gospel by thinking about his Damascus Road experience as described in Acts 9.  I’ll only summarize – leave your Bible open to Rom. 1 if you would.  Paul was fiercely loyal to the covenant Israel had with Yahweh.  He was trained as a rabbi in the most prestigious rabbinical schools of his day.  He may well have memorized the whole Torah (books of Moses) in Hebrew, and would have known scripture and rabbinic law with exquisite detail.  Memorization of huge amounts of biblical and non-biblical teaching (Mikra and Mishnah) would have been fairly common for the leading rabbinical students like Paul.  Memorization of scripture and rabbinic law (Mishnah) would have virtually been a full-time job. 

He says he was also zealous to put an end to the break-off Jewish groups.  He says in Galatians 1, “You know what I was like before – how I violently persecuted the Christians.  I did my best to get rid of them.  I was one of the most religious Jews of my own age, and I tried as hard as possible to follow all the old traditions of my religion.”  When Christ appeared to Paul (then Saul) on the road to Damascus and said, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting” Paul had a shocking, life-altering realization.  With all his training and with all his zeal for the covenant, the laws and the traditions of God and the people of Israel, he had been actually persecuting the very Messiah of God.  He was completely spiritually blinded and blindsided by this reality.  He had poured every ounce of his energy into his religion and perhaps because of his own zeal, he had committed perhaps the most grave sin anyone could commit.  He actually had persecuted the very promised Messiah.  Not only did he not recognize the Messiah, he cause Jesus the Messiah great pain.

It was this shocking realization that transformed Paul’s life.  It is from this experience that he wrote these words.  No amount of human effort can transform your own soul.  Salvation is not about what I do but about what God did.  Salvation is by faith and faith alone.  Paul’s life was transformed by faith, and by faith the Holy Spirit filled him with such love for God that transformed everything.  It even changed the way he read the Old Testament.  Paul went back to the scriptures he knew so well and now read them in the light of his new love for God and was attracted to these words in Habakkuk, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”  Already rabbinic Judaism had seen this as a programmatic verse of great importance.  But Paul’s understanding of the meaning of the verse was transformed by his experience.  “By my faith in Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Messiah, I have a spiritual life I could never have by simply being zealous for the law.”

ROMANS ONE:  NOT ASHAMED!

Now, perhaps twenty years after Paul’s Damascus Road experience, Paul is writing to the church in Rome – perhaps as a self-introduction letter in preparation for an upcoming visit.  He wrote what has become perhaps the most important and influential letter ever composed.  In this small section of scripture, Paul uses the word “gospel” (euanngelion) three times.  We’ll focus on his first and last usage (Read vs. 2-4).  Vs. 2 – “the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son.”  Jesus, Paul had now come to see through these new eyes of faith, was all over the Old Testament!  The Old Testament was pointing to the Messiahship of Jesus on many different levels, and Paul could not see this before.  The gospel is the proclamation about the person of Jesus – “regarding his Son.”    

This Jesus, Paul says, was of the stock of David.  But what is more important for Paul (vs. 4) is that Jesus was declared, by the resurrection of the dead, to be the Son of God.  He wasn’t simply the Messiah, he was the actual incarnation of God.  The resurrection confirms that this Jesus wasn’t simply a Jewish criminal.  He wasn’t under God’s curse for anything he had done.  You might think that the cross would prove that Jesus was not the Messiah – he lost and Rome won.  But, in fact, it proved the opposite since it ended with the resurrection.  Paul had encountered the risen Christ and speaks as an eyewitness.  The resurrection itself proclaims this message: Jesus Christ is our Lord.  Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Old Covenant who has dwelt among us.

In verse 5, Paul ties together the grace that we receive by our faith in Christ to our calling as Christian disciples and apostles.  There is, for Paul, a logical connection between the grace we receive and the calling upon us to apostleship.  Paul makes clear that when he says “we” in verse five, he is including the Roman Christians.  “You also are called to belong to Christ.”  The Greek reads, “You are also called by Christ.”  You’re also called to apostleship as Christians.  The implication here is clear: every Christian is called to participate in the proclamation of the gospel on some level.  The church is fundamentally apostolic in nature: the church proclaims the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ or it isn’t really the church anymore.

In verse 16, Paul says, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel.”  This is what scholars call a litotes, which means an understatement intended to imply the opposite.  I am extremely proud of this gospel, eager to proclaim it everywhere.  Why?  There is power in these words!  Power that had transformed Paul’s whole world.  It is as if there is a huge cable electrified by 100,000 volts going right through the center of this church.  The power comes in the proclamation of what God has done for us in Christ.  When this message comes into contact with receptive faith in a human heart, spiritual transformation happens that fills one’s heart with divine love.  This Jesus isn’t only for Jews, but for anyone who has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.

Paul says he is not ashamed of the gospel because in it, God’s righteousness is revealed (v. 17).  What does this mean?  Righteousness here means not legal rightness but a relational rightness.  It seems to refer to the fact that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through the forgiveness for sin and the fullness of the spirit their achieved, we attain a right relationship with God.  God wants to have an intimate relationship with each of us.  It is here, by faith in Christ – by accepting and appropriating God’s work for us in salvation – that we are ushered into right relationship with God.  We celebrate this close unity and proclaim it even as we partake of the Lord’s Supper.  It begins and ends in faith (v.17).  We cannot make ourselves worthy of God’s favor.  We start with our own unworthiness, and receive divine mercy by grace through faith from start to finish.

CHRISTIAN WITNESS

I want to make three comments about Christian Witness and Evangelism.  Let’s return to our original question about Christian witness.  Doesn’t this boil down to spiritual arrogance – I’ve got the truth and those nasty Jews, Muslims and Hindus are evil and going to hell?  This is troubling to many people in the post-modern context in which we live.  Many people believe it is fundamentally arrogant for us to assume we’ve got something, some message, that others are in need of.  To some, the darker side of believing Paul is to accept the notion that other religions are hell-bound.  Look, I think it is safe to say that God will judge all people on the basis of what they know and understand.  God is just and will not send people to an eternal fire for the accident of being born in Afghanistan.  We can fully affirm the importance of tolerance in terms of the protection of minority religions under the law (legal tolerance) and the importance of being socially inclusive of minority religions (social tolerance). 

But we should not feel like we have to be ideologically tolerant – as if we have to take back the Christian affirmation that “Jesus is Lord.”  We have to say, “I really am ashamed of this gospel – because I don’t want you to feel left out for being Jewish.”  The down side of all this tolerance is that we are drained of the joyful celebration we have in Christ.  And to the degree we feel guilty about celebrating Jesus’ salvation, to that degree we can no longer proclaim it with confidence as Paul does so beautifully here.

How can we retain Jesus and Humility – avoid the arrogance of some who profess Christ?  I want to make a distinction between ‘proselytize’ and ‘evangelize.’  To proselytize is to witness unworthily.  Unworthy witness occurs 1) whenever our motives are unworthy – out for our own glory; 2) our methods are unworthy – when we resort to coercion of any kind, or 3) our message is unworthy – we misrepresent the faith of other people.

To evangelize (in the words of the WCC Manila Manifesto) is “to make an open and honest statement of the gospel, which leaves the hearers entirely free to make up their own minds about it.”  We wish to be sensitive to those of other faiths, and we reject any approach that seeks to force conversion on them.” 

The only way to be faithful to our Christian and Methodist heritage (which seeks to be inclusive yet have a vital evangelical piety) is to make these kinds of distinctions.  I want to fully celebrate the salvation I have come to know in Christ.  God set me free from sin and Satan when I came to faith in Jesus Christ.  There’s power in these words and in this proclamation.  Let’s preach the gospel boldly and be evangelical in our witness.  I’m not ashamed of this gospel.  I was saved here.  So were you.  My point: it is possible to be forthrightly vocal in your proclamation of the gospel without being intolerant.

Second: we celebrate this salvation as a community.  We do it especially when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together.  These are outward signs of inward and sacramental realities.  We reclaim our right to be an apostolic community.  By that I mean we are missionaries simply be partaking of these elements together.  Many of you struggle in being a witness.  You feel awkward in explaining your faith to others.  But when you partake of this bread and cup, you are being a missionary – an apostle.  You bear witness to your faith in Christ the risen Lord.  The simplest and most effective method of evangelism is simply invitation.  Come to church with me!  Come and taste that the Lord is good.  There’s life here.  It’s making me alive and I want the same for you.  One great evangelist said, “Evangelism is very simple.  It is one beggar telling another where to find bread.”  We’re all spiritual beggars here.  But we have a wonderful meal to celebrate together!